Monday, January 11, 2010

Below is the book cover illustration/design for A Distant Light, (McClanahan) by Justice Bill Cunningham. This story involves a murder and subsequent trial in Murray, Kentucky and shines a light on racial injustice in the early 1900s in Kentucky. Of art interest - the challenge here was incorporating the two portraits from different eras of the two governors. The train and the weapon are both from that period. Also of lesser interest, I personally modeled as both the victim and the shooter. Next is a watercolor illustration depicting the late Dr. Thomas D. Clark for the cover of a book, Kentucky’s Clark, (McClanahan) by Bill Cunningham chronicling an extended conversation with the popular Kentucky historian. Dr. Clark graciously invited my wife Carol and I into their Lexington home to photograph him for this painting. Bill Cunningham is now Justice Cunningham, a Kentucky Supreme Court Justice. I did the portrait in 1986.